Highbrow

If, as Laurie Anderson once said, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture," what is writing about theatre design like? The question had peculiar, particular applicability as two new play productions showed how essential good theater design is to good theater. One of these was the national tour of the Shakespeare's Globe Theatre's Measure for Measure, which Theatre for a New Audience brought to Brooklyn in late December. The other was the disjointed revival of George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession, which plays at Irish Repertory Theatre through Feb. 19.

At St. Ann's Warehouse, Measure took measure of the physical depth, angles and sightlines of its space. The production, directed by John Dove, with its touching themes of love, lust, justice and perfidy, played out in a house that often has the qualities of a sepulcher. But here it was enlivened immeasurably by the emplacement of long rows of seats on the sides of the flat, rectangular play-space. With most audience members seated on steep risers stretching deep into the cavernous room, Measure was presented in a way which was neither that of a three-sided theater nor a proscenium arch one but something alike to an Elizabethan thrust stage. From the side, it played like a merry fashion show, fitting the strut-about performances.

Like all Shakespeare's Globe productions, Measure was mounted in a style that is becoming feverishly faddish among Bard-focused companies. Called "original practices," the idea is that by approximating the conditions under which Shakespeare wrote and produced-the garb, the period music, the all-male cast-we can rediscover what first made the plays tick for what we know (or think we know) of the 16th and 17th century theatre scenes.

For example: Before Measure begins, sidelined audience members observed the performers at long wooden tables applying makeup and donning costumes. Some of them chatted amiably. One of the jolliest (and nimblest) actors, Peter Shorey, who played bawdyhouse owner Mistress Overdone, ingratiated himself with total strangers, just like a bawdyhouse owner might, slipping all the while into character. His face in an outrageous stage of over-paint, his décolletage enviably cleaved, you could hear his British accent purr, "Nice coat"; "Nice dinner?"; "Good evening-how was your day?"

Whether St. Ann's is, as it claims to be, the only theatre in New York configurable in this manner, I'm unsure, yet the results were tremendous. Mark Rylance, who concludes his tenure as artistic director of the company with Measure, offered a tantalizing, teetering Vincentio, the duke whose sabbatical from the governance of Vienna sets up the story as his underhanded assistant, the reprehensible Angelo (the surefooted Liam Brennan) takes power and revives a long-enforced anti-fornication law.

This leaves Claudio (the dashing Colin Hurley) quivering. For the penalty for fornication is death, yet, thinking their nuptials secure, Claudio has just impregnated his beloved Juliet (the winning David Hartley) right at the moment that her relatives put a hold on her dowry.

Even when lineless, Rylance shows how Vincentio, returned in the role of a meek friar to track what follows, fears what he has wrought.

From the main section of the house, the distance acts like a coolant on the heat-seeking plot. Side-sitters, however, watch Angelo sexually blackmail Claudio's novice sister Isabella (the brilliant Edward Hogg), who falls to her knees to beg for her brother's life and discovers Angelo falling for her instead. It's one way to understand how "original practices" can make Shakespeare seem quite different.

If only it were so for Mrs. Warren's Profession. Despite sturdy, vocally bedazzling acting by the effervescent Dana Ivey in the title role (who is weirdly encased in costumes by David Toser that are redolent of armor), the Charlotte Moore-directed revival offers a brutally slow first act before catching its second wind and suddenly, thankfully, piling on speed. Here, the depth, angles and sightlines of the theater proved a distraction. Indeed, it seemed a first for the two-sided venue, which usually offers inventive staging to overcome the narrow stage's physical shortcomings. When you're seated in the steeply-raked main section of the theater, Moore's blocking of the 1894 play-in which Shaw assails the economics of the 19th century single woman and flirts with the idea of prostitution as a job skill-highlights the small, dreary situated side-section, not to mention the lean column supporting the ceiling.

The column acts like a character: When Mrs. Warren is confronted by a daughter she hardly knows, Vivie (Laura Odeh), and confesses that her wealth and status is the result of investments in a chain of European brothels, there are times when the elder woman seems actually painted into a corner. In other confrontation scenes and moments of drama, you stare at the column, not at the scene. Why should a play that is really one long liberating moment for Mrs. Warren, an airing of truth amid all the consequences that follow, seem trapped in the shadows or dimly lit? Neither section of the house seemed played to, removing us, physically and otherwise, from the import of